The convergence of the Internet and journalism has helped to shift media power from manipulative conventional media and distributed it to the audience and also individual journalists venturing on their private practice. The Internet has provided the audience with the tools to access information from different dimensions. This has also helped journalists to publish their content immediately as the news breaks without the interference of press deadlines and programming schedules. This allows the reader to get fast hand information without any manipulation or filtering from the media. Additionally, this also helps the journalist to deliver different or multiple formats of media like texts, photographs, and audio and video at the same time. The power shift also helps to provide an interactive platform where the consumer and the journalist can interact with each other and also exchange information without any artificially supported viewpoint or social interest.
An example is YouTube and Netflix, which have created a shift in media power in contrast to traditional media. YouTube, Netflix, and other similar converged media have provided clients with media freedom, which helps them to consume the content of their choice at any time. According to (Freedman, 2015), traditional media only transmits content which they want their consumers to watch so that they can manipulate them to produce the desired consumer behavior. This type of manipulation is mainly done through content programming like advertisements and the creation of specific television shows that have a high influence on consumers hence using the media platform as a control tool of people. Google’s medium article website has revolutionised the shift in media power through the elimination of the control media paradigm. It has enabled the integration of diverse information through the presentation of different forms of multimedia content. This has created a balance in media power because it has a platform where users can interact with the content producers.
The discussion and research exhibited in this essay shows that internet convergence has influenced conventional journalism in different dimensions. Journalism convergence has created a new form of cross-media which has involved broadcast, print, photography, and also the Internet. Through the integration of varying multimedia platforms, converged journalism has created unique benefits and opportunities. The convergence of the Internet and journalism has also created a change in media power relationships. The shift of media power has mainly shifted from the form of manipulation in the conventional media to equal power distribution in converged journalism. The power shift has created a platform where journalists create and publish information without any manipulative view from influential media houses or political influence. The same has also happened to the audience, who can now access information of their choice that is free from any manipulative interest.